Elves, Orcs and Assault Rifles

By Marcelo Hipólito

An epic of fantasy and adventure that takes place on the streets of São Paulo, Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, New York and Washington, in the confines of the Amazon rainforest, and under the scorching heat of Cuba.

On a day that will never be forgotten, the Dark Lord and the remnants of his evil armies disembark in the heart of the USA, while his enemies, the Peoples of Light, break out in the middle of a storm of destruction in another distant corner of the world: on the main avenue of the largest Brazilian city.

The meeting of fantastic beings from a destroyed mystical land with ordinary people of the present day results in a deadly conflict between the moral relativism of the modern world versus the absolute values ​​of Good and Evil, originating from a strange, mysterious and dangerous land.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purple Pill Publishing
• Release date: Apr 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781667472256

Book preview

Table of Contents

I. The Four Sisters

II. The Dark Lord

III. The New World

IV. The Prison

V. Time flies

VI. The Green Palace

VIII. The embassy

IX. The Beginning of The End

X. The return

XI. The descent

XII. Underground

XIII. Darkness descends

XIV. Paradise

XV. The portal

XVI. Preparations

XVII. The sacrifice

EPILOGUE

I. The Four Sisters

São Paulo City, Brazil. May 12th.

An uneasy silence loomed over the couple sat at that old café.

Clara stared at Fernando with a heavy, annoyed, irritated expression, as she swirled a cup of tea between her fingers, head down, trying to resume the conversation interrupted by a flood of mutual rebukes.

Don't act like that... mumbled Fernando.

And how should I act? Clara replied, her voice cracking, in a mixture of fury and contained tears. What did you expect throwing that bombshell at me?

A smile?!

Of course, not...

Then what?

I just want you to understand. None of this is my fault!"

Right, the woman scoffed.

Clara...

I get it, Fernando!

The silence resumed even tenser.

Fernando nodded, incapable of dealing with Clara's bitterness.

We'll talk later, said the young woman, leaving the establishment in a hurry.

Tiredly, Fernando sighed; he went to the cashier to pay the bill and go home.

He walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction to Clara's, disheartened by her dilemma and her reaction.

After all, how could he convince his fiancée that they needed to postpone the wedding indefinitely? To make things worse, the event was already announced to their families and friends, with several contracted services: buffet, decoration, DJ, cameraman, photographer, among others.

However, Fernando saw no option in the face of the imminent loss of his job.

He had dedicated his professional life – about ten years – as a reporter for O Diário da Madrugada, whose circulation decreased every year, like so many other outlets of the so-called old media; printed journalism had weakened because of websites and news blogs.

At the end of the month, Fernando would be unemployed and, deep in his heart, he knew he was unable to start a family in such conditions.

Fernando had met with Clara to convince her to wait until he got a new job. However, confirming her fears, she had promptly rejected his arguments.

At first, she had been sympathetic, albeit determined to continue with the ceremony. A well-paid employee of the municipality, Clara offered to pay the couple's expenses, if Fernando accepted to study for a civil servant exam.

This matter always exasperated him.

Clara admired Fernando's intelligence. Occasionally, she pressed him to seek a stable 9-to-5 government job, ideal for setting up a life together in security.

Fernando, however, preferred the field work of a reporter, averse to the idea of being stuck to a dirty desk in some dull office. In addition to this, despite his modern and chilled attitude, he did not accept being bankrolled by a woman.

Clara correctly interpreted her stubbornness as machismo, starting to doubt Fernando's love.

Was the loss of a job an excuse? Was her fiancé unsure about the wedding?

Fernando loved Clara, anguished at the young woman's insecurity.

He watched inertly as she untimely left the café, giving him time to digest the bad news, praying she would never force him to choose between their relationship and his profession.

Fernando turned the corner in a direction he knew, heading to a newsstand he used to visit on his way back from work.

Ironically, like many readers, Fernando had stopped buying printed newspapers, following the news on the Internet; he had his tiny share of contributing to the end of the paper press and, consequently, of his own unemployment.

However, he retained his appreciation for physical comics, fanatical even for the most obscure superheroes.

He pulled out his wallet to acquire some unassuming copy, blaming himself for spending money on the eve of his unemployed, instead of saving for the difficult days ahead, convinced, however, that that little magazine would help distract his thoughts from his argument with Clara.

He was handing the notes to newsstand man when his world literally turned upside down.

At first, he felt his fillings jolt in his teeth, as if they were going to jump out of his gums. Then, the prescription lenses of his glasses broke under an inclement buzz, which forced him and the other man to cover their ears. This one, a rough-bearded, hard-faced, experienced sexagenarian, accustomed to the dangers of the downtown area, cried out like a child; a prelude to the first shockwave.

It hit the streets, alleyways, and avenues with a violent bang, shattering the windows of the buildings around that region in a deadly rain of piercing shards, knocking over passers-by and throwing cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles against each other.

Its outsized strength tore the newsstand from its foundations.

The Journalist and man at the counter rolled through its metallic interior, amidst prints, cans of soda and juice, sweets, packets of cigarettes and snacks, as the structure slid over the sidewalk, stopping only when hitting a pole inclined at the end of the corner.

Fernando's glasses were gone. He and the sexagenarian were groggy, with abrasions and small cuts scattered on their faces, hands, and arms.

Just then, the second shockwave hit the city center.

Again, vehicles spurted through the streets, people flew in all directions and buildings shook, marquees and pieces of plaster collapsed on the sidewalks.

Luckily, the pole resisted, retaining the newsstand, albeit bending at an extreme angle, threatening to break itself.

A new moment of silence fell on Fernando and the newsstand man. They looked at each other, hopeful that that was the end of their nightmare.

Then, the last and most devastating shockwave hit them.

It ripped the stall from the protection of the twisted pole, smashing it against the bucket of a garbage truck, lost in the frenzy of collisions of countless vehicles.

The fragile aluminum structure of the booth fell apart on impact.

Fernando found himself hurled over a crowd of dead and wounded people swirling around him in mid-air.

Then, as sudden as it had come, the wave ceased.

Its victims plummeted onto the rough, hard asphalt.

Fernando succumbed to the pain and exhaustion, fainting.

But it would be precisely the pain that would awaken him, amid a scenario of frightening devastation.

Fernando had lost track of the time he had been unconscious. His forehead bled. His left shoulder pulsed, dislocated. His knees were on fire. His scratches had multiplied across his back and limbs through the tears of his shirt and dress pants.

Stunned, he struggled to rise from the carpet of shrapnel from the shattered buildings and destroyed cars.

His legs, however, faltered, and he collapsed.

His weight fell on his bruised shoulder in a burst of profuse, malignant agony that caused him to scream and almost lose consciousness.

While recovering from the pain, he spotted a piece of the newsstand lying on a corner: a leftover crumpled ceiling and torn wall. Afraid that the old newsstand man was bleeding under the fragment, Fernando forced himself to stand, staggering towards him. Every step, a torment to his hurt muscles and bones.

On his way, he shuddered at the corpses strewn across the street. Moans and whispers seized his ears, a macabre testimony to the affliction of the survivors.

Fernando, however, kept his resolute path through the metallic wreckage, only to come across thick stains of blood impregnated in it: the only trace he would find of the sexagenarian.

At that moment, the reporter heard the distant cry of a child.

Ignoring the calls for help around him, he hurried to that desperate cry.

A woman covered in blood from head to toe tried to grab the hem of his pants. He thought of helping her, but with tears in his eyes, he decided to pursue the child's cry.

Fernando entered an alley also devastated by the shock waves.

The cries came from one of the many shattered cars. This one had slammed head-on into the front end of a commercial building.

The driver laid leaning over the steering wheel; her head busted, and her brains exposed.

In the back seat, a baby was screaming at the top of its lungs, frightened, alone. The child had survived by a mixture of luck and the resistance from his seatbelt.

Fernando removed the boy from the car, cradling him in his arms.

Just then, a convoy of ambulances crossed the avenue ahead with their sirens turned on. The last of them braked sharply, taking the alleyway at the sight of Fernando and the child on his lap.

The rescuers got out of the vehicle in a hurry. The first one went straight to the victims fallen on the asphalt. The second focused on the baby.

Is this your child? Asked the professional, pulling out his emergency equipment.

Fernando shook his head, before pointing to the dead woman behind the wheel. I think that was the mother, the journalist said, handing the child over. Stay here. I'll help you too.

Fernando ignored the rescuer's request, walking away from him; he just wanted to get away from that horrific scenario. However, the further down the alleyway he went, the more slaughter and destruction piled up.

In shock, he wandered through the devastated downtown until he inadvertently ended up on São Paulo's most famous avenue: Paulista.

Not even the wildest imagination or the nightmares of a madman would have prepared him for what he saw.

At the end of Paulista Av., five hundred meters from Fernando, three portals of greenish light shone on the paving.

Ten meters high by three meters wide, separated from each other by just over two meters apart, each rift poured a silent and continuous row of strange silhouettes into our world.

They arrived by the hundreds under the emerald glow of the portals; in such quantity that they already crowded the avenue, with their initial wings cramming into each other.

Shockwaves had broken out of the luminous crevices when they burst into the city, destroying everything in their path within a twenty-mile radius.

A military police helicopter circled above the buildings, attentive to the chaotic mass of outsiders.

Police vehicles appeared along the secondary roads, advancing